Stories You Play

1st place: José Jiménez

José Jiménez cover

José Jiménez layout

José Jiménez character sheet

Judges Comments

• Has the design basics, but needs a few more passes. The Mouseguard size is an interesting choice, but doesn’t bring much to the layout. That said, there is a lot of promise in the layout overall and is just steps away from being cooked to perfection.
• In general, composition of the interior pages is open and organized, it breathes. Good. Styles use strong contrast to set off sections of text. Folios on bottom are helpful. In general, use  of illustrations is effective and contextual. Creative cropping sometimes works, sometimes doesn’t.
• This person has a reasonable sense of design and a basic knowledge of layout programs. The layout shows promise.

CONGRATULATIONS JOSÉ! You win:

2nd place: Micah Bauer

Micah Bauer cover

Micah Bauer layout

Micah Bauer character sheet

Judges comments:

• This entry is killed by random styles and page breaks with little consideration to the readability of the document. Nothing is seamless here. Some fluff, but no fire.
• Nice work on the cover. While I like the texture of the interior pages, the layout lacks more helpful architecture. It has no folios or guides, which will make the reference-heavy text more readable and useful for players. Watch orphans, particularly on subheadings and headings.
• This person looked at Mouse Guard and built a layout based on its form and look. They built four, maybe five, style sheets and then blindly (and blandly applied them throughout). This entrant has overlooked the crucial art of layout — to take all the parts that don’t fit and make them look seamless and readable. 

3rd place: Bill Brown

Bill Browne covers (Bill split the lifepaths into a separate book)

Bill Browne layout

Bill Browne character sheet

Judges comments:

• It was a solid effort. Tried to layout the entire book to make it follow a single theme. Lacked nuance, but the effort was solid.
• The general layout of the interior pages is dense — needs more room to “breathe.” Notably, the gutter — the space between columns, needs more room, as do the margins. Also, I like the colored boxes for player reference, but they need more padding between text and box edges.
• This guy really tried. He tinkered with the layout for the whole book and really tried to make it work as a whole. The artistry is lacking, but the effort is clear and appreciated.

In my previous entry, I explained my initial steps for my book designs. I settled on type and some style sheets. I also mentioned sketching a page template. That’s what this entry’s all about.

I always have a mind’s eye view of my designs. I do my best to capture that imagined vision, but it isn’t always easy.

For Conspiracy of Shadows: Dirty Hands, I wanted to capture a gritty, horrific look and feel. And, I also wanted a medieval vibe. There are a number of ways to do both. Games Workshop does it to various effect in many of its Warhammer books (including the Black Industries cum Fantasy Flight Games versions of Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay).

For this project, I had a slightly different vision. I wanted the book to combine old typography with modern day grunge effects. I envisioned grungy scrollwork that’s been the rage the last couple years. Think stuff that looks like tatoos. Barbed scrollwork, maybe splatters of blood. But, I also wanted a more modern, “layered” look. It might still be some distressed boxes. The idea was how Keith presents his work. It has a very strong historical fantasy element. But, he also mixes it up with some modern elements. In the comic book dialog, for example, the medieval guys swear with modern words. I love that effect. It may seem anachronistic, but it works.

But, I face a challenge. Doing that kind of illustration is damn hard and tedious. I’m no illustrator, but I can use Adobe Illustrator with good results. So, I needed models. I started web searching. I was particularly interested in terms like “scrollwork” and “eastern european” and some others. I finally discovered a few inspiring pages from Serbian manuscripts and, oddly enough, the modern-day vestments of an Australian priest.

Inspiration from Serbian Manuscripts, a priest's vestments, and some lineart scrollwork.

Those helped me bring an imagined vision into some concrete terms, but I still had plenty of work ahead.

Choosing page and text sizes

For starters, I had to decide on a page size and text area. As always, I turned to my handy Bringhurst. The Elements of Tyopgraphic Style has some genius information about page size ratios, choosing text blocks, and choosing other page elements like folios, magins and so on.

I wanted to have a 2-column layout, because I never seem to make them work well. I wanted another stab at it (not to mention it’s much more like a medieval manuscript). But, I also didn’t want letter size. I’m just tired of letter size. So, I settled on one of my go-to sizes, half-legal. It’s a broad page size (7 inches x 8.5 inches). A nice, squat thing with plenty of horizontal space. From there, I had to choose a text block size and location. Bringhurst’s many ratios and ideas about “chords” of rectangles helped.

I confess I get wrapped up in the esoterric stuff with these ratios. It’s amusing to me. But, in truth, I fudge here and there. I just like to play around. Here’s my pencil sketches of page design:

My pencil sketches showing page size and text block ratios and measurements, plus some initial scrollwork ideas.

Here you can see a couple things. I sketched out the basic page (top left) and worked through the measurements (in picas — I always use picas, mainly because I'm used to them from way back). The star-pattern looking thing on the bottom left is mostly nonsense — me aping Bringhurst's stuff to learn. But, it did remind me that the page is divided evenly into thirds of 14 picas. Double that (and add a gutter) and – VOILA! – a "meaningful" column width.

Even more intersting is the stuff on the right side. That's me sketching out those initial scrollwork ideas, as well as some "hanging" illustrations with magin captions. That should make for interesting options in layout, but there really aren't any captions. Hmmm. Well, an idea for stuff later on then.

Next, I have to take all these sketches into digital form. Since I know I'm doing the scrollwork (by far the trickiest part) in Adobe Illustrator, I started there. I created a 2-page spread (just a landscape legal page), and set guides for all my magins and text block sizes. I used some gray boxes to represent text and some other elements. That way, I knew the confines of my scrollwork and other elements so I could do a very, very rough digital sketch for the shape. Like so:

The page takes shape in Illustrator. Note the crudely drawn scrollwork border overlapping with the precisely drawn version.

Here, you can see my clumsy first sketch (just drawn with me dragging the mouse on the pencil or brush tool). And, the crisper, better looking version of me making it work in the pen tool, which is my secret weapon in illustrator. I did a similar process to this when I designed folios for Nine Worlds.

The page started taking shape. But, I knew I had a problem. So far, I couldn’t figure out how to give the page design that layered, more modern shape I was trying to capture. So, I just started drawing more rectangles, though not entirely without purpose. I was thinking about where chapter headings, even guide words could go. Here’s the result:

The final page prototype. Note the angled bars top left and horizontal bars top right. I placed the inspiration art to test illustration locations on the template.

The page finally takes shape. From vision to form. But, there’s still a lot of work to do, not least of all the scroll work. And, of course, pagination of the text itself. Both of those will take a lot of time to complete.

I kicked off the layout contest for Conspiracy of Shadows: Dirty Hands, hosted right here on StoriesYouPlay.com

Luke Crane, Keith Senkowski, and I challenge you to create an amazing book layout during the month of June, 2009. Each participant who meets the challenge receives Dust Devils and Nine Worlds PDFs. And, the big winner of the best book design receives free RPG books, including ENnie nominee Mouse Guard.

I’m really eager to see what people come up with for the contest. Meanwhile, I’ll be doing my own layout and posting here as I develop my own design. I’m just doing it for fun, maybe offering a few tips along the way. I’m not a participant in the contest.

UPDATE!

The winner for 2009 is José Jiménez. Check out the layout contest winners.

INTRODUCTION

We’ve seen many game design contests. Now, take a stab at designing a killer layout from an existing game.

Layout takes some creativity and a lot of work. The length of the text in this contest is significant. I deliberately designed this contest to mimic the hard work it takes to design a game. You will learn and improve as a book designer in this effort. Stick with it!

THE NAME OF THE GAME

You have until June 30 to complete an entire RPG book design for Conspiracy of Shadows: Dirty Hands by Keith Senkowski. This is a horror RPG with a pseudo-historical Europe background. It’s a wonderful, under-rated game, and the text is free.

For this contest, you’ll be using a specially edited version of the game text. It is the full game rules. However, I’ve trimmed the Life Paths and Rituals sections to help make the contest more manageable. (Don’t get too excited! The text is still robust, and Keith will release a full version with all Life Paths and Rituals soon.)

JUDGING & CRITERIA

Layout/art veterans Luke Crane (creator of Burning Wheel), Keith Senkowski, and Matt Snyder (creator of Dust Devils) will judge entries based on the following criteria:

• (40%) Information Design: Consistency, usability, & readability.
• (20%) Art Direction: Selection of artwork, contextual placement, cover design, overall vision, and original art or artwork modfications
• (20%) Use of Typography: Readability, composition, and “color”
• (20%) Aesthetic Appeal: Conveys color & atmosphere of the game, pleasing to look at

PRIZES!

Everyone who completes an entry receives free Dust Devils and Nine Worlds PDFs.

Besides fame and glory from the notoriously grumpy Luke, Keith, and Matt the winner will receive the following hard copy products:

• Agon by John Harper
• Dust Devils by Matt Snyder
• Mouse Guard by Luke Crane
• A print of artwork from Conspiracy of Shadows by Keith Senkowski

The winner will be announced near the first week of July, time permitting for judges to review entries.

In the creator-owned culture of RPG design, collaboration is difficult. It happened, certainly, but it was the exception not the rule.

Now, I’m calling collaboration here actual assistance on the creative process. This is in contrast to something I’ll call mutualism, which is creators helping each other out with publication and marketing and so on. But, it’s murky. Is playtesting collaboration or mutualism? See? Murky.

But, it’s different enough to talk about.

In the creator owned model, if two (or more) talented designers wanted to craft a new game, it’s an uphill battle, and sometimes a battle of egos. Some people did this successfully. Some people — myself included — tried and failed before they even got out of the gate.

This creator-owned thing was important to people. It was — and probably still is — definitional among my publishing peers. It was the foundation, both philosophically and financially, upon which everything was built as a movement. There are good reasons for this.

But, it also means the model is potentially limiting. If you’re a creator, and you want full control of your efforts without others — even partners — contradicting your wishes, you’re very likely to hit obstacles. This means that most people are one-man bands. And, for many of them, that works just fine. They do seek out assistance from people. For example, they hire someone to do art or layout. And, those are creative works (usually artists retain rights to their works in this model, but layout folks do not).

Right now, I’m collaborating with a friend on his game. I seek no ownership of his property. I just like collaborating with him and with his game. In the short couple weeks I’ve been doing this, I can clearly see his game improve significantly. We’re doing things that he doesn’t have the resources to do alone. Collaboration is powerful.

I can do all this because I’m not really following any model at all outside of having fun with a hobby and helping a friend. But, it’s instructive. Should I seek out to create something new — say, a new game design — why shouldn’t I enlist a team? It’s almost certain that while I may compromise on some level of unique and passionate vision, I’ll gain much more in quality and resources for a better product.

I wish we saw more of this in the indie scene (there is some, it’s true). Of course we see it all the time in traditional RPGs. So, it clearly comes with some downsides. But, the indie scene it’s really taking advantage of the benefits.

The Indie RPG scene has a tradition of contests, especially game design contests. They tend to be high energy affairs, and some have produces amazing games like Polaris, The Mountain Witch and 3:16. And, there are hundreds of other games, many hosted at 1km1kt.com.

Some of the design contests take a simple list of “ingredients” in the form of cool words like “horse” or “island” or “fire” and so on. Other variations have included inspiring artwork that designers incorporate into the game. And, a few of the contests have evaluated the presentation of the games with rushed-but-cool layouts.

I’m about to launch a new contest. It’s a layout contest. I want to see people’s creativity as it relates to information design, typography, art direction and layout.

I’ve got a text picked out. It’s Keith Senkowski’s Conspiracy of Shadows: Dirty Hands. I’m editing the text currently, and it’s a really interesting game. It also has some heft — it weighs in over 42,000 words. I’ll likely whittle that down to make it a bit more manageable, but one aspect of the contest is creating a layout that appreciates some of the nitty gritty work book designers have to do to make a layout work.

The trick will be doing it so that doesn’t drive away participation. So, I’ve got to settle on some happy medium.

I’ll be judging the contest along with at least one or two other layout-savvy pals. The winner will get an actual prize or two — actual RPG books that the judges think are well designed. Everyone will get at least some commentary and notes back from the judges on their layout.

It’s going to take several more days to assemble the text, get artwork, write the rules and launch the contest. It will likely run for about 3 weeks.

The end result will be several usable PDF layouts of a very cool and under-rated game in Conspiracy of Shadows: Dirty Hands. And, another result will be a fun way to help others improve their layout skills.